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[German Version] “Ahasuerus” is the standard equivalent in English versions of the Bible for the name of the Persian king Ahashverosh (Gk Xerxes). The Ahasuerus of the book of Esther is thus Xerxes I (486–465 bce). In character, the Ahasuerus of the book of Esther combines folly and cruelty. Esther is Ahasuerus's second wife, who dissuades him from slaughtering all the Jews in his kingdom. In Judaism, Ahasuerus has always been viewed as evil. In the Baroque period, by contrast, “Ahasuerus” was used as a Christian baptismal name. In popular legend, “Ahasuerus” is the name of the …

Theatrical play performed in connection with the festival of Purim (Course of the Year), documented from the 16th century onward in Ashkenazi areas (Ashkenaz). In the early modern  Purim-shpil, carnivalesque elements of medieval tradition were blended together both with biblical literature and with the symbolic subject of the salvation of the Jewish people described in the Book of Esther. During the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah), the  Purim-shpil became disconnected from its religious context and was therefore available to be used as a source of secular forms of dramatic art. 1…

Legend has it that when Jesus was exhausted on his way to the cross, a certain Jew refused him rest and has thus been condemned to wander forever until the last judgment. The legend occurs for the first time in a Bologna chronicle of the 13th century. In the centuries that followed, not least under the influence of growing anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages, it spread in various forms to southern and western Europe. In these forms the Jew was called Buttadeus, Boutedieu, and similar names. He then became “Ahasuerus” in a historically significant Brief Description and Account of the Wandering Jew …

name of a Persian king in pre-Christian Jewish tradition; it appears in the biblical books of Esther (1.1 et passim), Ezra (4.6), and Daniel (9.1) and in the apocryphal book of Tobit (14.15). A version of this article is available in print Volume I, Fascicle 6, pp. 634-635 AHASUREUS, name of a Persian king in pre-Christian Jewish tradition; it appears in the biblical books of Esther (1.1 et passim), Ezra (4.6), and Daniel (9.1) and in the apocryphal book of Tobit (14.15). In the Greek text of Esther, the Persian king’s name is Artaxerxes (pre…

, name of a person whom the Ḳurʾān associates with Pharaoh ( Firʿawn [ q.v.]), because of ¶ a still unexplained confusion with the minister of Ahasuerus in the Biblical book of Esther. To the details given s.v. firʿawn , should be added the fact that, according to al-Masʿūdī, Murūd̲j̲ , ii, 368, Hāmān built the canal of Sardūs, but Firʿawn obliged him to repay to the peasants the money which he had extorted from them for this. (G. Vajda) Bibliography given in the art. firʿawn see also J. Horovitz, Koranische Untersuchungen, 149 A. Jeffery, The foreign vocabulary of the Qurʾān, 284.

the chief courtier of King Ahasuerus (Xerxes), according to the story of the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible. He is portrayed as the villain of the narrative. A version of this article is available in print Volume XI, Fascicle 6, pp. 629 HAMAN, the chief courtier of King Ahasuerus (Xerxes, Xšayārša; q.v.), according to the story of the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible. He is portrayed as the villain of the narrative: He took a dislike to Mordecai, who was at the court of the king but did not pay his respects to Haman by bowing to him…

Ardashīr-nāma (The Book of Ardashīr/Ahasuerus) by Mowlānā Shāhīn-i Shīrāzī (Jud./Pers. Our Master, the Royal Falcon of Shiraz), the “father” of Judeo-Persian belles-lettres (fl. 14th century), is a versification of the biblical Book of Esther recast as a Persian epic romance that resembles the works of the classical Persian poet Niżāmī (d. 1209). It is a masnavī (epic in rhymed couplets) numbering nine thousand distichs written in the complex hazaj-i musaddas-i akhrab-i maqbuż-i maḥzūf meter. To date only the pen name of the poet has come to light. Shāhīn apparently…

[German Version] (Jan 25, 1521, Hamburg – Feb 25, 1598, Schleswig) began studies in Wittenberg in 1539 (1543 M.A., 1556 Dr.theol.) and became school rector in Cölln/Spree (Berlin) in 1544. In 1547, he became professor of logic in Rostock. In 1548, he became preacher and lector at the cathedral in Hamburg, in 1555 also superintendent. In 1562, he became the general superintendent …

Muslim tradition has retained only a weak and rather confused record of the two biblical characters bearing the name Daniel, the sage of ancient times mentioned by Ezekiel (xiv, 14, 20 and xxviii, 3) and the visionary who lived at the time of the captivity in Babylon, who himself sometimes appears as two different people. Furthermore, the faint trace of a figure from the antiquity of fable combining with the apocalyptic tone of the book handed down in the Bible under the name Daniel, makes Dāniy…

The chief minister of Pharaoh (q.v.) who with him rejected Moses' (q.v.) call to worship the true God and to set free the children of Israel (q.v.). In the Qurʾān, there are six attestations of his name. In q 28:6 he is mentioned alongside Pharaoh. They both have armies, and share guilt in the slaughter of the sons of the Israelites. God declares that they will be overthrown by the people they so oppress, who will then be heirs to their power and wealth (q.v.; q 28:4-5). There is thus an irony in the fact that when Pharaoh's household took the infant Moses from the river — an in…

I. Name Jensen 1892:62 suggested that the name of Queen Vashti, the spouse of Ahasuerus in Est. 1.9 (cf. Est. 1.11, Est. 12, Est. 15, Est. 16, Est. 17, Est. 19; Est. 2.1, Est. 4, Est. 17), is related to the presumed Elamite goddess *Wašti (or Mašti). Since there are more plausible explanations to the name Vashti, there is no need to make a link with a goddess whose name was in fact pronounced as Mašti. II. Identity Mašti is an Elamite mother goddess, attested in Middle and New Elamite royal inscriptions and in personal names. The correct reading of the signs dmaš-ti, once read Barti, is pro…

[German Version] A haggadic midrash (Haggadah) on the book of Esther comprising two originally independent portions, according to the title page of Pesaro's first edition (1519) also called Midrash Esther or Midrash Ahasuerus. Part 1 (parashot 1–6; approx. two-thirds of the total) offers a verse-by-verse exegesis of Esth 1–2. The beginning of a new section of the text is usually marked by a prooemium. A significant affinity, in lang…

I. Name Vohu Manah, ‘Good Thought’, is the name of one of the seven principal deities of Zoroastrianism (the Amesha Spentas). A slightly blurred form of his name is extant in the Hebrew transcription of Mehuman (מהומן), the name of one of the seven chamberlains of Ahasuerus in Est. 1.10 (Duchesne-Guillemin 1953:106). II. Identity In Zoroastrian theology, a group of seven deities, called the Amesha Spentas (‘beneficent immortals’), occupies a prominent position. Although the antiquity of the doctrine of the Heptad has been the subject of debate (Narten 1982), its main features were…

Hāmān was the chief minister of Pharaoh who, together with the latter, rejected Moses’ calls to worship the true God and to free the Children of Israel. In the Qurʾān, there are six attestations of his name. In Q 28:6 he is mentioned alongside Pharaoh. They both have armies, and share guilt in the slaughter of the sons of the Israelites. God declares that they will be overthrown by the people they so oppress, who will then be heirs to their power and wealth (Q 28:4-5). There is thus an irony in the fact that when Pharaoh’s household took the infant Moses from the river — an in…

, the Nebuchadnezzar of the Bible. The Ḳurʾān does not mention him. He is a very complex figure in Muslim tradition and here we can record only the outstanding points. It retains in the first place the main Biblical features, using to an unusual degree the texts of the prophets Jeremiah and even Isaiah, and establishing a connexion between Buk̲h̲t-Naṣar and Sennacherib, whom it makes the great-grandfather of the former. It also confuses him sometimes with later rulers such as Cyrus and Ahasuerus…

Mowlānā Shāhīn-i Shīrāzī (Our Master the Royal Falcon of Shiraz) was the earliest and most accomplished poet of the Judeo-Persian literary tradition. His name is most likely a takhalluṣ (Ar. pen name). In a panegyric dedicated to the Īl-khānid ruler Abū Saʿīd (1316–1335), Shāhīn reveals that he lived during the reign of this monarch. Thus he may have been a near-contemporary of Ḥafiż (d. 1389), Iran’s greatest lyrical poet, who also hailed from Shiraz. There is some doubt, however, about whether Shāhīn was originally from Shiraz. The seventeenth-century Judeo-Persian chronicler Bābāī…

Ezra-nāma (The Book of Ezra) is a short Judeo-Persian narrative poem by Mowlānā Shāhīn-i Shīrāzī (Our Master, the Royal Falcon of Shiraz), the earliest known and best of the Judeo-Persian poets who flourished in Iran in the fourteenth century. It is superficially based on the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and was usually appended to and copied with Ardashīr-nāma (The Book of Ardashīr [Ahasuerus]), an epic by the same poet based on the Book of Esther, with whose contents i t is connected. Numbering only five hundred distichs, Ezra-nāma is written in the same meter as Ardashīr-nāma. It…

Mūsā-nāma (The Book of Moses) is the first and longest Judeo-Persian epic on biblical themes by Mowlānā Shāhīn-i Shīrāzī (Our Master, the Royal Falcon of Shiraz), the fourteenth-century poet considered the progenitor of Judeo-Persian literature. It sets to verse non-legal portions chiefly of the Book of Exodus, but also of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. A masnavī (epic in rhymed couplets) numbering some ten thousand distichs, Mūsā-nāma is written in the classical Persian meter hazaj mussadas makhzuf.Shāhīn’s major works include two epic cycles, one based on the Pentateuch, […

As far as is known, Judeo-Persian belles-lettres began with the works of Mowlānā Shāhīn-i Shīrāzī (Our Master, the Royal Falcon of Shiraz), who flourished in the fourteenth century in Iran. Only the pen name of the poet is known and the fact that he lived during the reign of the Ῑl-khānid ruler Abū Saʿīd (1316-1335), to whom he dedicated a panegyric. Shāhīn's surviving oeuvre consists of two major epic cycles, the first of which, known only as [ Bereshit-] n āma (The Book of Genesis), a name bestowed upon it by scholars, consists of versifications of selected narrative part…

paraphrased versification of the Book of ʿEzrā containing midrashic and Iranian legends. A version of this article is available in print Volume IX, Fascicle 2, pp. 131 ʿEZRĀ-NĀMA, paraphrased versification of the Book of ʿEzrā (q.v.) containing midrashic and Iranian legends. It was composed by Šāhīn (q.v.), the leading Judeo-Persian poet of the 14th century. ʿ Ezrā-nāma, which includes about 500 distichs, is generally found at the end of Šāhīn’s Ardašīr-nāma (q.v.) and is composed in the same meter; the date of its composition was thus probably the same as that of…